Exploring Gender Roles in Media

Comments (0)

Transcript of Exploring Gender Roles in Media

Tatianna DesakMrs. FinnieHSP3M Exploring Gender Roles in Media Key Question: Does the media influence the self esteem and self worth of young adults, specifically young women? Hypothesis: I think the media has a strong influence and a very negative impact on the self esteem of young women and teens. Observations: Analysis of Data Conclusion Tally Chart: Exploring Gender Roles in Media

- 50% of the advertisements have a weight loss theme, and sell products that support weight loss. Some of these ads include Skinny Water, Thin Crisps, Yoplait Light, and Pepsi Zero.

- In 70% of the ads, ideal beauty is shown through models who are tall and thin. 80% of these ads feature women who are white (or appear white) and have clear, blemish free skin.

- Of the 9 commercials that women were featured in, 88% of the ads used skinny, thin models.

- 100% of these advertisements were targeted towards a female audience.

- 50% of these ads promote being thin directly; some of these ads include Skinny Water, Pretzel Crisps and Yoplait Light. RUNNING HEAD: Exploring Gender Roles in Media RUNNING HEAD: Exploring Gender Roles in Media As we can gather from our Analysis, ads targeted towardswomen tend to either promote being thin or weight loss directly, and indirectly. Women are being offered products like Skinny Water, Pretzel Crisps, and Yoplait Light, whose commercials specifically target women’s weight. Also, every ad in this research assignment that’s purpose was to sell fashion or clothing like jeans used women who were already thin. Some of these women in these commercials exhibited eating disorder behaviours, most notably the Yoplait Light and Lady Foot Locker commercials. The inner dialogue of these women are similar to that of people suffering from anorexia. Some individuals with this disease will fixate on food and calories and work out excessively. We can determine from this data that the media sends a negative message about weight loss towards women, and use the same ideal body type in their advertising campaigns, but does this have a negative impact on the self esteem of young women? 7 According to Laucius, a study by Jeremy Kees, a professor from Villanova University in Pennsylvania showed that when a group of college age women were shown a booklet of ads featuring thin models, and another group were shown ads without models, just products. The group who was shown ads with models reported negative feelings about weight, appearance, and physical condition. Afterwards, the researchers “tried to gauge the short-term link between seeing thin models and eating behaviour, and used the ploy of offering free Oreos as a thank-you to their study participants”. They found that the women who saw the images of the thin models were four times as likely to refuse the cookies. Many people would agree that there is a correlation between advertisements and the self esteem of young women. I can personally attest to this because when I see ads that feature attractive, thin and tall women, I find it depressing because I do not consider myself to be any of those things. Hartmann, M. (2015, June 11). Yoplait Pulls Ad. Jezebel. Retrieved April 13, 1930, from jezebel.com/5812429/yoplait-pulls-ad-accused-of- promoting-eating-disorderspage=

Pretzel crisps and Pro Ana Ads. (2006, August 10). Jezebel. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from jezebel.com/5606654/pretzel-crisps-changes- pro+ana-ads-to-something-not-much-better www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/reallife/story.html?id=ca7ae3a5-04b6-4a52-a2fd-4daae6536d74 Conclusion (what we can conclude from Analysis) RUNNING HEAD: Exploring Gender Roles in Media 6 The most critical point about this research is that my analysis is VERY subjective. For most of the ads I

made points about the models/actors being very thin and tall - this is subjective information because of

individuals may not agree with these findings. Another flaw in this research is that I selected 10 ads; if we

were to do more accurate, deeper research it would be a good idea to analyze more ads than 10.

However, I feel I did a thorough and detailed analysis of all of the ads I selected, and was able to confirm

my hypothesis through my personal research and secondary research as well.

A way to improve this research could be to possibly include other individuals’ analysis of the commercials

because my analysis is very subjective and they may interpret the ad in a different way. It would also be

interesting to do a similar study to the one Kees did using the particular ads I selected. 8 9